Re: new IPv6 policy draft - real soon now

[Bob Fink <]

Brian,

At 01:48 PM 4/15/99 +0100, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
>>   * The biggest concern left was the slow start procedure within the sTLA.
>>   * It was discussed at length but no agreement could be reached. The
>>   * registries want to have some kind of control against allocations that
>>   * are given out that are not used as they are supposed to be used, while
>> 
>> One other reason is that if all organisations/networks have the same
>> prefix length ISPs will have difficulties to make rationale routing
>> decisions if that may be necessary in the future.
>
>Well hang on a moment. sTLAs are intended for ISPs and exchange
>points, and we're expecting them all to show up in the default-free
>table. I don't see your point.

It is a built in discriminator for the future. That is, if in the future
the larger ISPs with sTLAs decide to not carry routes for lesser sTLAs,
they make their cut on length of prefix. I've been getting lots of flack
from ESnet engineering staff for having any such built in discriminator (as
if I had a choice :-). I had been skeptical at first that this was the
intent, but increasingly I see that their fears are justified by comments
such as Mirjam's.

TO say the least, I don't like it. It is basically the large (which often
means more financially influential) being able to automatically
discriminate against small. If it was simply a way to avoid ultra large
routing tables, maybe it could be justified, but the hidden agenda that
appears more and more in the v4 world is for large ISPs to muscle the
smaller into paying for peering/connectivity.

It would be nice if v6 could stay as neutral as possible on this, and at
least not give overtly obvious ways to encourage such behaviour.


Bob